


Distractions

by annavale23



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Akane Needs A Distraction, Bad Decisions, F/M, Hue Discussions, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Past minor character death, after episode 11, introspective, season 1 based
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21672133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annavale23/pseuds/annavale23
Summary: “Did you feel guilty, Kougami-san?” She asks with her voice quiet and biting in its nervousness of voicing such a question, because talking to him about that death must seem like such a trespass. He can see it in her eyes too, the nerves but also the longing to know that she’s normal. That most people feel the way she has, even if most people descend into clouds instead of staying in their mostly-clear skies.“Everyone feels guilty for these sort of things, Tsunemori,” he tells her and it’s not an answer at all.
Relationships: Kougami Shinya/Tsunemori Akane
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Distractions

It starts after her friend dies.

After her friend was _murdered, _to be more precise. Sliced open in a way that would have been better if he’d seen, not her. That’s his job, not hers, but the past can’t be changed. He was lying shot and she went and saw things that she should never have seen.

So it starts the day after he’s released back into his room, finally able to smoke and be _alone_. Just as he’s lighting one up, there is a small knock on his door. A small knock, all delicate and quiet, and somehow he knows it’s her before he even opens the door.

He crosses the room and opens it, something he would only do for her. Anyone else he’d ignore, unless it was an emergency or something. She’s different. She’s always been different, ever since she shot him.

“Inspector,” Kougami says evenly, looking down at her, at those wide eyes that are so clear despite all that’s happened. She shifts, from foot to foot, chewing on the inside of her cheek. She doesn’t say anything but he can read it, obvious in those eyes. She’s not come here by accident. Her feet have brought her here, perhaps without fully thinking about it, and now she’s here she doesn’t know how to say what she wants. He looks at her for a moment’s beat and then, casually as if this is something that happens all the time, he steps back from the doorway, leaving it open and free for her step through it.

“Would you like to come in?”

Her eyes fill with relief that he broke the silence first.

“If that’s not an imposition,” she says nervously, and her footsteps echo that as she ever so slowly steps into the room. Kougami shuts the door behind her, affecting an _I’m-not-bothered_ sort of attitude even if his shoulders bunch a little as her eyes flick over the place. It feels more than wrong to have her here in his private space, and he thinks himself ridiculous for even thinking that, because he’s the hunting dog and hunting dogs do not have privacy, not really. She’s the Inspector. Everything in this building is hers technically.

He breathes out smoke and wonders if she cares about it. It’ll stick to her clothes if she stays in here too long but maybe it’ll remind her she’s in the present, not in that past with a knife and a clear psycho pass.

She stands awkwardly, her hands clasped together and looks at him out of the side of her eyes. He breathes out once more to assuage the strangeness of this moment before asking:

“Did you want something, Inspector?”

She jumps, small and a shiver in her shoulders, somehow looking like she didn’t expect him to speak – or maybe she temporarily forgot he was there, through the drowning feeling that must be in her head right now. He remembers the feeling quite well.

He moves, stepping around her and the books on the floor. She intakes breath, short and sharp, and he ignores her as he clears the sofa so she might sit. He doesn’t look at her as he does, letting her come to her answer in her own time, knowing that eventually, she’ll break the silence.

“I keep thinking about her,” Tsunemori says, and her voice is quiet and yet so firm. There is no wavering to her voice, but that’s Tsunemori. She tries to be strong even when she doesn’t need to.

He sits down, all long limbed and effortless, and after a moment or so she move to sit on the other end, all tight and pressed together, her hands, in her lap, are once again clasped so tightly.

“I keep thinking about her,” Tsunemori repeats, her feet scuffing against the bottom of the sofa. “It’s not even just about her-” she pauses, clearing her throat over the word _death_, and he can’t blame her for that, “that moment. It’s _everything_. All those moments we had, all the ones we should have.”

Kougami breathes out again. Smoke hazing the air.

“It’s just not _fair,”_ she lets out an irritated sound and Kougami laughs, low and husky in his chest. He goes to speak, to tell her that life isn’t fair, that things happen. It’s not fair that her friend’s dead and it’s not fair that Makishima got away. Nothing’s _fair, _and normally he wouldn’t shy away from saying that, but it’s not just anyone in front of him. It’s Tsunemori, fragile Tsunemori who shouldn’t have ever seen what she’s seen, and his words would be a cruel slap to the face and he won’t do that. Kougami is not the most gentle of people but for her, he would try. So he bites his tongue back, because he knows these words won’t help her, but he doesn’t what will. He broke. She can’t.

“She should have had more,” Tsunemori breathes out, breath soft in the smoke-filled air. “She should have had-”

She’s imagining it, he knows. The life her friend should have had. A life with a clear psycho-pass, a life of normality and marriage and kids and such. The proper sort of life.

Kougami wants to tell her not to think about that sort of thing. It doesn’t do any good to think about what can’t be – it’s those sort of things that darken a hue. Can he tell her what she should do though? It’s not like he knows best, because he didn’t follow what he’d preach to her.

“You shouldn’t think like that, Inspector,” he tells her anyway, even if he has no right to. “It’ll only cloud your hue.”

Tsunemori huffs quietly, and he looks at her. The profile of her face, so stark against the dimness of the room, and the smallness of her shoulders in this room that usually feels so tiny to him. She’s so delicate, he realises, and he is still so awed that she’s even in this job. She looks like the type that should do something hue-sustaining, something where her friends wouldn’t be kidnapped and killed. But he knows she’s more than she looks. She shot him, after all.

“That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Tsunemori says. “It’s annoying. I think I know what I should be thinking about, and I don’t want to _forget_ her.”

“No one’s telling you to forget her,” Kougami says patiently. “But dwelling on things that can’t be are dangerous. They’ll only cloud your hue and then you’ll end up like me and the other dogs.” He thinks he’s a hypocrite. People told him the exact same things when Sasayama died and what did he do?

A small furrow marks Tsunemori’s brow, as it always does whenever he refers to himself and others as dogs. It offends her even as her offense amuses him. ‘Dogs’ is one of the nicer insults levelled at latent criminals.

But, as she’s been so fond of reminding him, she prefers to think of them as more. It’s reassuring in a way, to see her frowning just as she would before this all happened.

“Ginoza-San told me that,” she says eventually. “I don’t think he’s right though.”

“How’s your hue been?” Kougami knows exactly how it’s been. He’s been checking – or he’s been asking Shion to keep an eye out, and it’s a testament to how serious this situation is that Shion didn’t tease him once about his concern. Tsunemori sighs.

“A little higher than usual, but nothing bad. You don’t need to worry, Kougami-San.”

“Who says I’m worried?” He takes another drag on his cigarette and it’s burning down faster than he expects. The time, the pauses in between Tsunemori’s speeches must be longer than he’s noticing. It’ll be over before he knows it.

Tsunemori shoots him a look, her eyes glimmering.

“I don’t think you’d ask if you weren’t worrying,” she’s astute as always and he allows a small wry to his lips. But then her gaze falls and her expression with it, and he sees it out of the corner of his eye. He breathes out, setting his shoulders as he takes the cigarette out of his mouth to stub it out in one of the many ash trays he’s got scattered around here. She may still frown and be so astute, but she’s still reeling from this murder.

He should have seen it instead.

He should have somehow managed to protect her from that too.

“Maybe you just need a distraction,” Kougami suggests, knowing it didn’t help him at all in his own aftermath, but they’re different situations and different people. She’s not him, and she’s stronger than him in her own way. She’s got a mostly clear hue, even through this murder. She’s filled with determination to catch Makishima and not vengeance that burns the insides of lungs like he is. She’s clear. He’s not.

He wonders if that irritates her. Watching her number stay steady and powder blue even as she replays that moment over and over.

Her eyes glance over at him, and he notices that her cheeks are flushed. From the conversation and her irritation, he supposes, but a distant part of him notes that her cheeks don’t look half bad when tinged with that light pink.

“Maybe I do,” she says.

He recognises the tone she’s weaving through her words. It’s an improved version of his own, when he’s going to do something risky and most probably stupid. His eyes narrow ever so slightly as he sees her swallow, sees her contemplate something locked up behind those eyes of hers, sees her make her decision. His surprise as she shifts across the sofa, closer to him, is just about held back, even as she tucks her legs up and under her to stand on her knees on the sofa, so that her eyes are level with his.

It’s because he trusts her in how own way that he doesn’t move away from her even as her rapid breaths, sweet and light, brush against his skin. He watches her with eyes that do not shut even to blink and he wonders what on earth she’s going to do.

And because he trusts her, he doesn’t move when she leans forward, too quick and jerkily, to roughly press her mouth against his.

He is more that surprised.

At himself, for letting her lean forward. At her, for thinking of doing this. He’ll end this… strangeness quickly however.

“Inspector.” It does not take much effort to pull back from her lips, her lips which are soft and delicate just like she is, because he’s got control over himself and he _knows_ this can’t happen, not even as a distraction. “You shouldn’t.”

He expects to see the same words as he’s thinking reflected in her eyes. She’s sensible and smart and controlled, and so she should understand that distractions can’t involve _him._ He’s not fit for such things, not anymore, and he expects her eyes to understand that. He expects them to be embarrassed too, bright with foolishness and glad of his interruption so the situation can still be recovered. He expects her to speak of how he’s right, how this is a mistake – because it’s _him_, a latent criminal – and he expects her polite, red-flushed apology so he can remind her once more that he’s just the hunting dog and she should not bother to apologise to him.  
But instead. Instead of her honeyed embarrassment he sees fire and irritation, and it stuns him for just a moment. Where is all he expects to see? What is this in replacement?

Tsunemori takes a breath, shuddering in the after clouds of the smoke. Her eyes are dark and searching, looking through his as if she thinks she’ll find what she wants in there. He looks back and knows she’ll only find shadows and the things that darken hues. But she keeps looking without once glancing away, so maybe that’s what she wants to see. Something unflinching and honest. Something that, in the aftermath of what’s happened, doesn’t lie.

His eyes say the rest of the warnings when she doesn’t move away, all the cautions about kissing someone like him, a latent criminal who she should be more than happy to be _away_ from, and for a moment he wonders if he’s been too friendly with her. If she wanted this sort of distraction, should it not be Kagari she goes to? He’s younger, less threatening. Easier.

But she’s not moving away, and then again, neither is he. He supposes the choice has already been made.  
“Kougami-san,” she says with a steadier voice than her eyes bely as she reaches for him again, her intentions clear, “please shut up.”

He does. She’s the Inspector after all.

* * *

  
And so it goes.

She comes nightly to his door with tired and wide eyes that tell of sleepless nights and terrible memories that plague. He always lets her in after that delicate knock, letting her slip into the dim, smoke filled room because if it makes her feel calmer, who is he to argue? Everyone needs their hue-clearing methods and he’s kept an eye on hers. Just above what it was before the murder, but it’s staying consistent, and that can only be good.

Sometimes she comes to talk. Not _with_ him, but _at_ him. She talks about her friend only, about their friendships high and low moments and the mindless sort of things that Kougami knows are important now. Now her friend’s gone, these small details are everything, so he listens patiently even if usually, this sort of thing would bore him to death.

Other times she sits in silence. She slips past him, all small and delicate, and she sits down on the end of the sofa that’s quickly becoming _her_ end and she does not move and does not talk. She just sits and breaths and he understands this as well. The overwhelming, desperate need for silence but also of company, and he does not dwell on how strange it is that he’s the company she’s chosen.

Yet other times still, she comes for what she wanted the first time. The sweet nothingness of kissing, the pure distraction of it. It never goes any further than lips on lips, because he’s the dog and she the leash and she’s so small and pure anyway, and it can’t ruin her any more than burying these needs would. It’s just kissing and he’s careful where he puts his hands, just using them to steady her rather than to _touch_ her, even if she has no such thought, gripping him like it is everything. And this too he understands. This is how she’s coping, and so he lets her. Who is he to tell her what she needs? So he lets her kiss him and lets himself remember that she tastes like lemonade candy, fresh and sweet just like her.

* * *

Masaoka is the first to notice that there is something strange happening and of course it’s him. Masaoka’s the only one who’s truly _watching_, the only one who genuinely cares. Ginoza’s way of telling Tsunemori to get over the murder is to tell her to go home in a cutting sort of way instead of understanding that the endless work keeps her sane, and Masaoka’s way of looking after his team has always been to watch, not just dismiss.

Tsunemori is outside, bickering again with Ginoza about how she doesn’t _need_ to go home, because there is work to be done and if he’s so worried about her psycho-pass, why doesn’t he just check it? It should be a small victory for Tsunemori that she’s finally convinced Ginoza to have those sort of arguments worth privacy, but in the mind-set she’s in, Kougami very much doubts she’ll care about being pleased. Kougami’s got coffee in a takeout cup on the desk and he’s judging whether it’s worth drinking it even with it being stone cold when Masaoka’s chair creaks, those knowing eyes turning onto Kougami.

“The little missy,” Masaoka starts, and Kougami is suddenly so much more interested in his coffee than he was before, already knowing where Masaoka’s going to go with this, “hasn’t been going home when she clocks out here.”

“Mmmm?” Kougami affects a distant disinterest. “How’d you figure that?” He feels Masaoka’s eyes raking down his shoulders and it’s more penetrating than even a Dominator’s gaze can be.

“She clocks out here at one time but the log at the door says a different time,” Masaoka says evenly. “It’s a little… interesting, don’t you think? What could she be doing inside here when she’s not working?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Kougami concentrates firmly on the ridged edges of the cup.

“And you’re more tired than usual too, Ko. You’re drinking more coffee, if that’s even possible,” Masaoka continues the slow, creeping interrogation and it’s just like being crept up on by a criminal. Kougami’s senses are on edge, crinkling away as Masaoka’s eyes never falter.

He should have realised that eventually, the old man would figure out Tsunemori’s odd times.

He should have realised that, armed with that knowledge, the old man would know there’s only one place Tsunemori would go.

“I’ve not been sleeping well,” and yet still Kougami plays this game, of not admitting even in the face of certainty, because this is not Kougami’s story to tell. If Masaoka wants to know what Tsunemori’s doing, he can ask her himself.

Narrowed eyes glint from across the room.

Kougami holds his breath.

“Is that so.”

“Yeah.”

Masaoka is quiet for a moment. Evaluating, thinking. Kougami takes the moment to breathe out, to shut his eyes for just a second. It may be a small blessing, he thinks, that Tsunemori’s actually _going_ home instead of spending all of her hours in his quarters, because if that was happening, he thinks Masaoka would be playing a very different role. More berating than quietly suspicious.

Even still, he knows what Masaoka is thinking and he’d agree. This is dangerous. Hounds and their controllers shouldn’t mix, not this close. There are boundaries and lines that ought to be respected, because hues that are dark and muddied ought not touch those that are bright and effortless, and he knows this, and yet every night when Tsunemori knocks on his door, he always opens it.

Masaoka speaks eventually, just as the muffled voices from outside seem to be dying.

“Be careful, Ko.”

Kougami glances over at those endlessly concerned eyes. For him and for her.

“I will.”

* * *

“When I go home,” Tsunemori says one evening as she sits too close to him, her scent too strong despite the smoke, “I can’t help but think about her. I feel guilty.”

“Guilt is the first stage of a clouded hue,” Kougami says out of habit, because they both know she’s doing fine. Just a little above her old average, but still so light. Her hue seems untouchable sometimes, like nothing could sully it. Even he doesn’t seem to be able to, but he never lets himself think like that for long. He’s a criminal. He taints and she shouldn’t be this close.

Yet he’s still not stopping it and neither is she.

“She should have more life. I got her killed,” Tsunemori states and it’s with less guilt-wracking emotion as the other times she’s said it. Kougami gives her a side eye.

“It’s not your fault, Inspector. It’s _his_.” The man who haunts, staying as a ghost in the system. The man that makes Kougami’s hue darken at even just a single thought.

Tsunemori’s glancing at him now.

“Did you feel guilty, Kougami-san?” She asks with her voice quiet and biting in its nervousness of voicing such a question, because talking to him about that death must seem like such a trespass. He can see it in her eyes too, the nerves but also the longing to know that she’s _normal_. That most people feel the way she has, even if most people descend into clouds instead of staying in their mostly-clear skies.

He sighs, a vaguely loud sound in the quiet of the room and wishes for a cigarette. But she might kiss him in a moment and he doesn’t want the hassle of chucking it away before her mouth collides with his.

“Everyone feels guilty for these sort of things, Tsunemori,” he tells her and it’s not an answer at all. She notices, because of course she does, and breathes out rather sharply.

“That’s not an answer, Kougami-san.”

“Do you really need an answer?” He counters with, glancing at her again. It’s what these night sessions are composed of. Glances and questions, silence and kissing. What he really should feel guilty for is _this_. This, that Ginoza would chew him out over. This, that he needs to be careful with just as Masaoka warned. Tsunemori isn’t just anyone. She’s grieving and she’s fragile in her strength. He needs to be careful, _careful_. He can’t drag her down with him like Ginoza seems to think he will.

Tsunemori’s still looking at him.

“Our other friend wanted to go for brunch yesterday,” she says instead of responding, because of course she doesn’t need an answer. His hue is testimony enough to his guilt and he knows she’s seen his crime co-efficient. She knows what the answer would be.

Kougami raises an eyebrow. Tsunemori was, as she has been ever since she was cleared to come back after the murder, at work from the first moment possible.

“I couldn’t go,” she continues.

“Ginoza would have let you, if you were due to work.” But what are shifts anymore? Nothing works as it used to anymore.

Tsunemori shuts her eyes for a moment and her shoulders quiver ever so slightly. He looks at them, the gentle shaking, and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s reaching out to touch them. A comforting hand, solid and firm against those small delicate shoulders, and she does not react to it but she doesn’t shrug him off either.

It’s the closest to comfort she’s allowed herself to be given, he thinks.

“I can’t go out with just Kaori,” she says eventually, eyelashes scraping her cheekbones. “Not now.”

* * *

“I think if we get him, if we bring him to justice, it’ll make it easier.”

He is eternally glad she doesn’t say _better._ She understands that catching Makishima will help only a little but it can’t fix the damage inside. It’s like a scar, the deaths that Makishima has caused, and the only hope is for the edges to stop itching. The bumpy line will never disappear.

“We’ve just got to _find_ him.” He’s recognising his tone on her again. Not his _risky and stupid_ tone, but his maddening obsessive tone he mutters mostly alone in the dark, but also to her, because she’s the only one who didn’t mock him for his obsession with a ghost before the ghost was proven real. It unnerves him in a way he can’t understand enough to explain, and it’s unsettling enough that he shifts, his hand coming back to his lap. It takes him a moment or so to understand at least one thing about the unnerving feeling: he doesn’t want her to waste her time on Makishima like he does. This is the gateway drug of sorts. One thought of finding him and then it’s more and more and then hues become worse. She’s already spending too much time with him. She shouldn’t add on more.

“You shouldn’t stop living your life because of him, Tsunemori,” Kougami settles on saying eventually and the words taste like ash on his tongue. Tsunemori laughs lowly and it reminds him of his own laugh.

“That’s easy for you to _say_, Kougami-san, but you didn’t listen to that advice did you?”

“I’m different,” he says immediately. “You’re…” _too good to waste time on him. You’re clear and lemonade and he’s not worth it. _“You’re meant to leave these sort of dark things to me, remember?”

She shifts. Her head turns to him and her hand reaches up to curl into the front of his shirt. Small and delicate against his broadness and it’s still so surprising just how slight she is. He’d never underestimate her for it though, because she shot him. She’s strong even in this cracked way.

“I am, aren’t I?” She breathes out, ruffling his hair slightly as he bows his neck to meet her. Their lips, barely a centimetre apart.

He looks at her and all the flecks of colour in her bright eyes. His breath is momentarily snatched from him.

_Be careful, Ko._

“Leave all the darkness to me, Tsunemori,” he says, and then she kisses him.

* * *

_Leave all the darkness to me._ He’s the one meant to deal with it, the one with the clouded hue who can deal with his numbers always in flux. He thinks of this as he carries her away from the burning in a field where everything will end, his long strides taking her swiftly from the danger until he can find a safe spot on the ground. A part of him can’t help but marvel over how small and delicate she is in his arms. Light as a feather and yet stronger than steel. Fragile and yet not broken.

He’s the one that deals with the darkness and this has always been his. _Makishima_. Since that moment with Sasayama. This is his burden and she can’t be part of it. She can’t save him from this choice.

So he kisses her forehead, soft and quick, as a parting gift if he may, and he whispers her name as he places her down in a bundle of limbs. A first for him, not to call her _Tsunemori_ but Akane. _A-ka-ne, _and he savours it like it is perfect. Then he steps away, leaving her far from his burden and darkness, leaving her safe and clear, and he walks to do as he must. The only punishment that will be permanent for Makishima. A gun, cold and speechless in his hand. No SYBIL, no crime-coefficient. Just his thoughts, his judgement, his darkness.

This is for him, not her, but he still thinks _I’m sorry, Akane,_ before he lodges a bullet through Makishima’s skull.

* * *

For her, it started after her friend’s murder.

For him, that murder only sparked his conclusion.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I was tempted to make this fic end in an AU, where Kougami doesn't end up fleeing Japan, but I like bittersweet endings too much! I've been wanting to write a fic on Psycho-Pass for years and then this just came to me in the middle of the night. At some point, maybe I'll write a happier fic but I feel like this one needed that canon ending considering where it started.
> 
> Also - I've just watched all of the available Psycho-Pass 3 episodes (currently 1-6), and it's actually really cool! So if you're on the fence about it, just give it a try!


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